I’m back from a week of relaxing and unwinding. My parents, grandparents and I spent Thursday-Friday at a beach resort in Port Dickson. While walking out of the lift, I suddenly caught sight of a nice sunset with the sun just at the edge of the world. It was picture perfect. But by the time I fumbled with my camera and took a picture, it was too late. The sun just sank down the horizon and all I was left with was traces of its orange trail. That sunset was memorable, especially since it was set against the sea, with nice swimming pools in the foreground and coconut tees swaying along the beach in the middle-ground. It’s weird how that sunset seemed special, even though sunsets have always been available on a daily basis. Though I don’t have a picture of it in my camera, there’s one I can refer to in my head. Now that’s the ultimate camera.

The retreat was good, overall. From the sermons to the food and my living quarters. My room was super big (about 4 times the size of my room), and so was my bed. It must have been a super-single sized one. Through I was mainly reminded not to focus so much on the quantitative aspects of church growth, but rather, qualitative aspects. I had my difficult times of questioning why my church was the way it is, but it’s over already, so this mainly served as a reminder. There were many other things learnt, but one of the important ones was to try being more caring towards newcomers – something the unsociable me isn’t good at.

During the retreat, I tried worship leading for one of the worship sessions. Well, it was a good experience. Weirdly, I wasn’t feeling nervous at all, even though it was my first time. Oh yes, and there’s a revival of the 2007 favourite song. It was sung at least twice a day for the entire retreat. Somehow, everyone kept picking it. So now, 我的神，我的父，我的磐石 is top of the charts – again. And now that everyone’s bored of it, its popularity will sink back down and the cycle would most probably continue… Ok I think I shouldn’t analyse worship leaders’ song choices so much..

Will be off to Malaysia for church retreat in a few hours till Friday. I’m kind of excited. I’ll be rooming with xj.. haha.. just as we wanted it. But I think I’ll have to spend time revising while over there since exams are going to crash on me when I come back.

The camp theme song...

I managed to catch Toy Story 3 yesterday while my class crashed the sec 4s’ Sunday School class outing (this usually happens…). Then we went to partyworld KTV. I’m not so much of a karaoke fan, but after going for karaoke twice in the past 2 weeks, with nearly the same people, I’ve gotten more and more ok with it. There are 2 major problems I face – 1. I don’t know many pop songs; 2. It takes me more time to read the Chinese lyrics so by the time I finish reading, I usually miss the whole line already. But I can safely say I’ve improved a bit… I think.

I was thinking, if karaoke included Christian songs, it’d probably be much easier for people like me who have limited exposure to the secular world of pop music. While scrolling through the long list of songs, I caught sight of Amazing Grace in various versions. But then a counter-thought quickly came to my mind. How can people just sing “sacred” songs just for the sake of pleasure and the fun of hearing their voice on a booming surround-sound system? That leads me to a further point – when we worship, is it usually how nice the music sounds that comes first? I remember while studying for O level music, I came across an interesting fact - that the prosperity of towns usually depended on the quality of their church music. Weird as it may seem, it might be similar for most churches today. I’m pretty sure if some churches did without their rock band for a while, the number of attendees would probably fall. If I scale it down to let’s say, no piano in my church (it has happened in dire situations before), the same phenomenon would probably occur. But this is also why I salute the English assembly for being able to preserve the long tradition of not using any instruments at all for every main service.

So what’s my main point? Music was created to enhance worship, not the other way round. I admit that sometimes, I do fall into that trap. But I hope I’ll grow out of it completely.

This morning, I went to AMK library and managed to catch a ride from yeye since he was dropping food off at my house and sending Jensen to bowling practice. It was raining very heavily. When I stepped out of the car just at the side of the road, in the midst of hurrying and trying not to get wet, I sank my foot into the side of the road, near the curb. Then, I felt a cool and gradually wet sensation. I quickly jumped up the curb, as fat as I could react, and there was the spongy effect in my shoes. When I assessed the damage in the shelter, I concluded that I must have stepped into an ankle-deep puddle river. Sigh.. So I had to bear with a squishy shoe the whole morning. But when I reached home and read the news today, I think what I stepped into was merely the tip of the iceberg, or rather, the surface of the flood. Poor people in Orchard Road… Oh and the news reporter was rather funny. The shop owners in Luck Plaza weren’t quite lucky – their shops were flooded.

I watched Karate Kid today. It was quite good, but very long.

How many times have we forgotten to pray?

Violin exam is going to be on 29 July, hopefully. Please, no volcano ash. I don't think I can live through another great disappoint like that. Mom said I play better (during practice) when I know the exam date. That pretty much explains why the after-shock got me aimless.

Yesterday’s TF Anniversary went well, better than I could imagine. It was my first time planning the anniversary as the tuan zhang, The 7 weeks of publicising, planning, working well past midnight seem to have paid off. From the feedback I heard, those who came thought it was meaningful and well-planned. Except for 2 Chinese words that I used wrongly, my Chinese standard was probably unbelievable for some. It took me at least 3 hours to type out my whole script.

The success of the anniversary isn’t mine or the committee to gloat over. Rather, I think God blessed the whole event and so I was nothing but (to put it a little crudely) a pawn. But that is honourable enough for me.

My throat feels weird… I predict I’ll be sick by Wednesday, latest.

The past week has been ok for me, mainly filled with extra lessons, revision, preparing for TF anniversary tomorrow and some “invisible” time spent on slacking.

Today, I went back to school for my last extra lesson – Chemistry. It turned out to be quite an interesting 1.5 hours spent in one of the ground floor classrooms.

The most spectacular event that occurred was when a gigantic lizard suddenly appeared on the floor. Trust me, it was huge. However, of course, unlike the typical reactions in let’s say, SMSS, no, there was no screaming and my class didn’t frantically evacuate from the room. The cool and composed boys, along with my teacher, patiently coaxed the unexpected guest out of class. Sharon and I just took a good look at the lizard and stood a good distance away from all the action.

And this incident suddenly reminded me of something that happened during WOW. My class had just checked into a hotel in a village in Vietnam and my roommates and I were walking to our room. Some guys tagged along with the supposed intention of wanting to check out our room. I entered the room for the first time and looked around, and suddenly saw a cockroach on the bed. No, I didn’t scream, but it looked real enough to make me spurt out, “Ohmygoodnessthere’sacockroach!”. The guys suddenly burst into laughter and the rest of us soon realised it was a fake one they threw on the bed. I think they brought the cockroach all the way to Vietnam just for that moment.

Ok, off to do violin practice now.